You're the stupid one. You have no idea about what kind of power I have.
"Alright, you've made your point. Can you release Eve now and keep giving her the pills so that she can never use her power again?" Ty said.
His mother's laugh echoed down the corridor. "Of course not. She will serve as a lasting reminder to you so you never cross me again. You will begin working here full time now. And the next time you betray me, Eve will die."
Ty struggled harder against his guards' grip. "You wouldn't kill your own daughter!"
"She is as good as dead to me. I would never experiment on my own children, but I can't let them walk around with special powers either."
"Why?" Ty demanded. "Eve never hurt anyone."
"She is a freak, an anomaly. As are all the rest here." His mother swept her arms to point out the entire corridor. "People with such skills can't be allowed to procreate. Where would the world be then?"
"A step higher on the evolutionary ladder?" Ty spat.
"Where did you hear that nonsense? These people are nothing more than evolutionary mistakes, the dangerous side effects of clumsy DNA engineering done in the last century. They must all be weeded out!" She turned to the guards. "Take him up to exam room four now."
"Wake Eve! I've learned my lesson," Ty protested.
"Oh, no, you haven't. I have yet another lesson for you to witness. "You don't think I've forgotten about your little friend from the Badlands? I doubt there will be enough left of her today to put to sleep."
Ty's stomach turned at her words.
"Do you even have a heart?" Ty raged as the guards dragged him backwards towards the elevator.
His mother laughed again. "I must, because it beats. But I don't ever feel anything else there."
~
This is the end.
Maya tore her eyes from her own death reflected in the big cats' eyes. She laid her hand over the last seeds she planted, but no power came through. She had used it all. In vain. Wasted it. The world spun around her.
"I'm sorry!" she yelled into the sky willing all the dry earth to hear her. "I could have done so much more!"
She closed her eyes and imagined sitting in the old, dried up oak tree in her home town.
Life-giving warmth she never felt building in her chest exploded from her hands and into the dry earth.
With a loud crack, like stone breaking, the earth parted. The whoosh as the tree burst from the earth knocked her back.
The oak tree she loved, her favorite hiding place, rose from the ground, fully formed, forcing the growling, snarling cats back.
The trunk groaned as thick, healthy branches sprang from it and hissed as the leaves appeared.
A loud crash was followed by the sound of falling things.
The wasteland disappeared. Maya was knocked back, lying by the garden she'd made the day before. Only now, a massive oak tree grew from it, extending through the ceiling. Concrete and steel rained down from floors above through where the thick branches pierced it. The branches shattered most of the windows lining the exam room. Shouts came from the adjacent room where lights flickered wildly and alarms blared.
I've done it. I've destroyed her horrible school.
Maya yanked the sensors from her body. She shielded her head from the debris still falling through from the ruined ceiling and stumbled out of the exam room.
With a groan the ceiling gave way as she reached the doorway to the exam control room. Its beams held against the rain of steel and plaster, glass and falling hospital beds. Several of the doctors in the control room were buried beneath the rubble.
She tried to locate the silent woman, but she couldn't see. There was too much dust, too many flashing lights.
No one tried to stop her as she stumbled through the room towards the exit.
A steel pipe hit her head and grazed her arm. Hot blood spilled down her forehead and into her eyes. Her knees collided painfully with the floor. Maya tried to rise, but her damaged legs couldn't hold her weight.
So close.
She crawled towards the door, the room turning dark around her, the beeping and screaming growing distant. Until all went silent, and she saw nothing at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The freezing cold of his power that started building in the sleeping area grew colder as the elevator rose. Trickles of it had already escaped down the channel in his right arm. Ty let them. He'd need all he could hold to get Maya and Eve safely out of the facility. In front of him, his mother still chuckled a little from her nasty joke.
A loud crash sounded just as the elevator hissed open on the examination floor. Alarms went off almost instantly.
"What's this?" his mother screamed and ran forward towards the source of the noise.
Ty twisted his arm and grabbed the guard who held his right hand. A cold current of his power seared through the channel. The man vanished.
The other man looked at him, his wide eyes full of terror. Ty punched him in the throat before he could let out his scream. The man released him as he toppled to the ground, clutching his throat. Ty kicked him in the temple to knock him out. He was two steps away when he realized he couldn't let him live. Not after he had seen Ty use his power.
He knelt beside him, sweat rising on his forehead, his right hand shaking. There was no other way. He grabbed the man's arm and willed the cold current to flow through his hand. It did, like it always had. His knuckles collided with the floor when the man disappeared.
"No use regretting it," Ty muttered to himself, ignoring the sense of sweet relief from having used his power. The man was innocent, only following his mother's orders.
Ty reached the door to the exam room where the commotion started to see his mother knocked down by a falling bed from the holding cells one floor above.
A majestic oak tree grew from the exam room, piercing the ceiling with its thick branches.
Had Maya done this?
"Ty, help me!" Martin yelled. With one hand he was holding Ronia upright, with the stump of the other he tried to rouse Maya.
Ty rushed to her side, lifting her up. Thick blood gushed from a cut on her scalp, matting her hair.
"We have to get her out of here. Please help me," Martin pleaded.
Ty picked Maya up and slung her across his shoulder. A hand gripped his ankle, its owner buried under a heap of metal and plaster. Ty kicked his foot free and rushed from the room.
Once inside the elevator, Ty punched in the code for the sleeping area.
"No, we need to get out of this building!" Martin shouted and pulled his hand away.
"I'm not leaving without my sister!" Ty protested.
Ronia took hold of his hand gently. Blood flowed from a cut above her eye. She typed furiously with her free hand.
"Waking your sister now would make her go into cardiac arrest. She is safer where she is."
"No, you're lying! I'm not leaving Eve!"
"She's telling the truth," Martin insisted. "Once they've been put to sleep they must be woken gradually. The process can take weeks. We can return for her later."
Ty shook his head. It couldn't be true.
"We have always been honest with you," Martin insisted. "Can you risk not believing us now?"
Ty halted the elevator and looked from one to the other. "She'll kill her if I don't save her."
"I doubt it. She knows you might one day come back to get her," Martin said.
They were right. He couldn't risk not believing them. Ty entered the code for the exit.
No one tried to stop them as they rushed through the reception area where the alarms blared too. The door that led to the parking area stood wide open. As he expected, the emergency protocol kicked in when the ceiling collapsed and opened all the main exits.
"Where now?" Martin asked.
"I have a craft." Ty led the way to the craft he'd parked in the public parking space.
He let Martin take Maya and went to the cockpit. He kicked in the panel beneath the
controls and ripped out a small black box that could feed all information about the craft to the SF command room and tossed it out.
The parking area was still deserted. Likely all the guards were handling the crisis upstairs. Maya's tree had broken right through the floor where the other subjects were locked in their cells.
Ty ran back to the cockpit and entered the coordinates to Rober's secret doorway.
His mother's bruised and bloody face appeared on the screen moments after takeoff. "Where are you going, Ty? There is no way out. Not a single gate will let you through. They are sealing the shield as I speak. Come back now and I'll forgive you."
"You're not capable of forgiveness!" Ty yelled and turned off the screen.
He hoped Rober's exit really was as good as he had claimed, that it wouldn't be affected by the sealing.
He flew the craft as fast as he dared, staying low near the ground where there was less traffic and fewer control points.
The pure white skyscrapers of the warehouse district rose before them. They were almost at the shield. The screen flickered back to life. His father's scarlet face filled it, the thick vein in his forehead pulsing. "Turn around and come back right now!"
The shield glimmered in the soft morning light.
"Never. You better make sure Eve survives!" Ty yelled back. He was through taking orders from either of his parents.
"You leave me no choice then. I will never trust you after this!" his father said and turned to someone standing on his left. "Do it."
A row of red lights flashed across the control panel, wiping away all the buttons used to steer the craft. Ty felt the craft pass from his control.
How was he doing this? It shouldn't be possible, not after he removed the black control box.
~
Ronia pointed for Maya to sit down in one of the seats in the command room. The craft was identical to the one in which she was brought to the city.
Maya clutched her injured left arm to her chest and sat down.
Ronia returned with a small red box.
"That was an amazing tree." The woman's words appeared in the air.
She opened the box and took out a piece of gauze which she used to clean the wound on Maya's scalp. The stinging brought the room into clearer focus.
"Where are we going?" Maya asked while Ronia applied a cool cream to her wound. The pain disappeared.
"A safe place. The Sanctuary." She pried away Maya's arm. A few moments later, Maya watched the gash on her shoulder seal itself shut when Ronia applied the cool cream to it as well.
Ty had helped her after all. She never thought he would. That panic of his, which filled the room each time he visited her at the hospital, was sickening and had a definite source. His mother. How long could he remain sane while in the presence of it? She had to try and make him see, had to try and get him to face it.
Then a cold fear gripped her. "Are we leaving the city?"
Ronia typed, "Yes."
"What about my friend Giles? Is he here?" Maya asked.
Ronia blinked up at her in confusion. "It's only me, Martin, Ty and you here."
Maya leapt to her feet. "No. We have to go get him as well. I can't leave him behind."
The hovercraft lurched to a sudden stop, making her stumble.
Ronia looked at her, fear widening her eyes.
"What is it? What's happening?" Maya asked.
~
They'd reached the shield, but the craft stopped dead.
Ty adjusted the settings frantically, even rebooted the whole panel; he had no control of the craft anymore.
"Come back home, Tyberious," his father said calmly.
"Let me leave," Ty said. "I don't want anything from you anymore."
His father laughed. "You are such a child still. I don't know what possessed me to confirm you as my heir."
Ty was well past caring whether his father considered him childish. "Let me go and you'll be free to choose a new heir."
"Fine," his father said. The control panel flickered back to life. "I'm going to leave the decision to return up to you. If you ever want to enjoy the privileges of our house again, you will not leave the city today. I will also let you earn my forgiveness if you return now. I fear your mother never will."
There he went again, using Ty as a weapon against Violetta. Ty was well past caring about that too.
He broke the communication line and seized control of the craft, angled it vertically. It shot up and stopped at the coordinates for Rober's gate, right at the point where the domed ceiling of the shield started.
The red lights disappeared from the control screen. Only the word PASSCODE blinked across the otherwise black screen. Ty pressed his tattoo against the screen and held his breath. Heat erupted in a single line on his tattoo as the machine read the code.
The word ACCEPTED flickered across the screen. The buttons reappeared on the control screen and Ty let the craft squeeze through the shield and into the Badlands.
No one called after that.
The screen told him there was no pursuit either. With any luck, the SFs didn't even notice them leaving the city. Rober hadn't exaggerated. His exit was perfect.
Ty flew the craft himself for the fifty miles through the no man's land between Neo York and Dakota. He loaded the maps into the control panel and chose one that showed the land areas in detail all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
Then he called Ronia and Martin.
"Can you show me where the sanctuary for the gifted you spoke of is on this map?" Ty asked Ronia.
Martin looked at her sharply, but she nodded and pointed to a location almost in the ocean.
Ty read off the coordinates and punched them into the autopilot, making sure they would fly nowhere near any of the other cities and their shields. Martin volunteered to mind the controls.
"Thank you for saving me from that place," Maya said when he and Ronia entered the command room.
"It was my fault you were there in the first place. It was the least I could do," Ty replied and moved to walk past her.
She took his hand and held him back. "Please tell me, will Giles be safe in the city?"
Ty ignored the pang of jealousy. "I told him never to look for me. If he does that, he should be fine."
"Can we contact him?" Maya pleaded.
Ty looked to Ronia, who was eyeing them both with a thoughtful expression on her face. He pointed at her. "I don't even know where we're going. Ask her if you can contact anyone once we get there."
"We can." Ronia's words appeared in the air.
Ty tried again to pull his hand free, but Maya wouldn't let go. "I know how much you risked getting me out. You have given me my life back and I will always be grateful for that."
Ty clasped his free hand over hers. "That tree you made had more to do with saving you than me. Besides it was time for me to leave too. Past time, really."
Her deep brown eyes lit up in happiness, her lips slightly parted.
Ty placed his hand on her cheek, enjoying the warmth of her skin passing into his. Then he leaned over and kissed her.
She might have pulled away, or wanted nothing of the sort. But she leaned in and returned the kiss.
Ty let it all go. Lost himself in the warmth of her life, her sun, her soft lips pressed against his.
A few moments later, he reluctantly pulled away. "Now I have one last thing to do."
She let him go, looking startled and pleased at the same time.
Ty walked over to the weapons locker by the wall screen.
He pulled out a hunting knife and sat down on the floor. He rolled up his left sleeve and stared down at his shiny tiger tattoo. The mark of his family, House Remarque, the most powerful family in the city of Neo York.
He winced as his first cut went too deep.
"What are you doing? Stop it!" Maya shouted. Ronia held her back when she tried to rush to him.
Ty looked up and smiled at her. "Don't worry. I've seen my mother do this a few tim
es to family members who displeased her. I have to get the cuts just right."
He bit hard into his lower lip as he made shallow, half-inch incisions along the perimeter of his tattoo.
"Please stop," Maya whispered, but Ronia still held her back.
"Almost got it now," Ty muttered. He made one last incision, longer than the rest, along the top of the tattoo. He gripped the skin between his thumb and the blade of the knife. "Done."
He gasped in pain as he yanked the skin back, evenly and firmly ripping the tattoo, along with the layers of skin that contained it.
He nearly passed out, willing himself to surrender to the sharp, burning pain.
Finally the piece of skin with the hard lines that made up the tiger hung from his trembling fingers. He tossed the vile thing on the floor, and broke the hard lines with the handle of the knife then leaned back against the wall, panting.
"There. Now I'm no longer a member of House Remarque. Long have I waited for this day," Ty said, affecting the best Castle Life accent he could muster.
Ronia finally let Maya go. She rushed towards, him, examining his arm. "We must wrap this up."
Ty pulled his arm back and cradled it. Thick drops of blood were appearing through the thin layer of bright red skin on his arm. "No, not yet. I think I'll let it bleed for a while first."
Maya went to get the medicine box.
"Nonsense," she said as she knelt beside him. "This can get infected."
She took his arm and gently placed in against her thighs. In a few moments she had it neatly wrapped up in white gauze.
Drops of blood seeped through the bandage.
She sat beside him and cradled his head against her chest. The rise and fall as she breathed was the sweetest lullaby he'd ever heard.
"You know, if you'd applied the healing cream first, it'd be mended by now," Ty muttered.
Her sharp gasp jolted his head. "I'm sorry. Here I'll do it."
He laughed and placed his uninjured arm around her shoulders. "No leave it for now. I don't feel any pain at all."
The Grower's Gift (Progeny of Time #1) Page 20